Poetry Posts

by Christopher Stolle Everyone here is in the middle of something.  We’ve come from different places and we’re headed somewhere after this.  People talk incessantly, voices blending into hummingbird murmurs.  They reminisce about previous trips and decide how to get to their hotels and discuss how best to solve myriad conundrums— an existential exercise in folly and futility.  But these imperfect strangers find commonality in this singular activity.  They converse politely despite knowing they’ll never see each…

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by Zach Jones I hold up the roof of my home  Flowers spring up at the base of my feet   I keep my TV volume at only odd numbers   And line my yard with pavement   I walk on wood and gasoline products   Cheap rolls, shiny tile   I run myself ragged   When the…

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by Megan Hodges Bring milk, powdered now, rationed through a glitching app that thanks you for your patriotism.   Eggs, if you can find them, each stamped with a barcode and a warning: “May induce memory.”  Two loaves of bread, one for now, one to trade for a minute of Wi-Fi so we can watch the President cry into a teleprompter, insisting, yet again, that it’s still…

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by Matt Zambito           “One of the biggest revelations is that the Earth and Moon            are slowly drifting apart at the rate that fingernails grow,            or 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) per year. This widening gap            is the result of gravitational interactions between the two.”  —from a NASA statement released August 10, 2020   Alas, this celestial couple is  separating, capitulating…

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by Zach Jones I miss those Marlboro memories,  Smoking, watching silver screens.  Call me from a phone booth late at night.  Scratches on my LP helped me sleep.   Beat boys jumping trains, Bumming for a bed. Now drugstores are disappearing,  Drugstores are dead.   Give me back records,  Give me cassettes.  Drugstores are disappearing,  Drugstores are dead.   I miss real life,  I…

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by Sarah Carleton We stand outside the iron gates of Universal Studios,talking about how capitalism has gone awry and how lawmakers here are afraid of paper strawsas we peer through the bars like paupers at a palace, taking in the set of America—a mishmash of glass block,fairy-tale cottages, midcentury city…

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by Sarah Carleton My dad is not walking around the house,his knee making a little ping,    his cane rocking the backbeat,and he isn’t telling the same joke five times or working his waythrough a story about a neighbor  who knew a guy who was the cousinof an old college friend…

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by Ihor Pidhainy Bread and potatoes, Add a dollop of cream, A cabbage, a beat, a carrot, And the occasional cutlet or chicken, And you have your diet Foolproof for centuries Unless a famine strikes, Your neighbor steals your grain,  And other crops are siphoned off. Your children and parents thin out And die, and you hobble along Until your neighbor…

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by Yuan Changming During the great flood Noah hid himself in the ark                                While Dayu tried to contain it                                With his bare hands    Prometheus stole fire  From Olympian gods                               While Sui Ren got it                               By drilling wood hard  Smart Daedalus crafted wings  To fly away from his prison-tower                                While Old Fool removed the whole                                Mountain blocking his way …

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by Sarah Carleton A single hummingbird measures the crash and pull of waves beneath a wide sky. No green shimmer and near-invisible flight—the sprite holds still,black as a quarter note. Palms twice the girth  of the ones back home rise into the clouds.Royal palms, they’re called, a name that tastes British, like…

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